Toshiba describes the Satellite U920T as having a “precious silver finish with brown woven texture... on silver metal base.” It’s nicely understated and the texturing feels good in the hand being more grippy on the outer shell. Despite its cogs and struts at the back, the overall impression is that it’s fairly sturdy and will take the knocks.Indeed, even the slightest knocks can be a problem with Windows 8 convertibles, as screens all too easily flip between portrait to landscape modes. In this respect, without doubt, the screen orientation detection on the Toshiba Satellite U920T is the best I’ve encountered. There is a momentary pause, which seems quite deliberate, as if it’s determining if you really intend to stay in this position. It works for me and as far as avoiding toe-curling frustration goes, it gets my vote on this refinement alone.If only the keyboard could match this touch of class. Admittedly, those broad screen borders give rise to a larger base, which provides for more space for the keyboard. So this isn’t too cramped and there’s room enough for a decent sized trackpad. However, those backlit tile keys feel so lifeless. The spacebar is the worst culprit here, having so little travel that it’s hard to ascertain if you've pressed it hard enough. In the end, I just had to consciously dig in more to avoid words running into each other.

Sure, you do get used to it eventually, but you might want to try this out first to see if it bothers you, especially as there’s some flexing as you get toward the middle of the keyboard. On the plus side, there are some useful shortcut keys along the top including media transport controls and decent sized navigation keys too.The Toshiba Satellite U920T boots to the login screen from cold in nine seconds. Tests with PCMark 7 notched up a balanced settings score of 3189 and when set up for performance, this shot up to 3816. The benefits of having an SSD on-board helps the numbers here and it’s not such a bad score compared to over 4700 from the Core i7 Sony Vaio Duo. It doesn’t feel sluggish either, although some Flash heavy web pages could take their time to show.There’s only the HD 4000 Intel integrated GPU on this model which will suffice for most tasks, but this is no gaming machine. However, it does run Linux with an Ubuntu 12.10 Live CD working with the Wi-Fi but not the accelerometer. The touchscreen allows mouse movement, but taps do not fire up applications nor open folders. The battery life with PowerMark shows how a lower powered CPU can really deliver advantages when it comes to the duration game. Here it managed 2hrs 51mins which in real world use is easily double that.

Occasionally, the touchscreen would need repeated swipes – particularly for closing apps – but showed no obvious latency issues. Video playback was smooth and while not exactly dazzlingly bright, it was certainly sufficient although tablet mode in direct sunlight could prove to be a challenge.As for audio, the speakers are in the base at the front and don’t make much of an impression until you fire up the SRS Premium Sound 3D control panel. SRS has been performing miracles with small speakers for decades now and this software makes a huge difference to the overall output. It certainly sounds louder, but you can get those tweaks from VLC Player. The fun starts when you click on the Advanced section, as it takes you beyond the presets for music, movies and 3D so you can tweak for improved dialogue intelligibility and bass enhancement, among other things. If you’re hooked up to external speakers or headphones, there are options for these too.

The Toshiba Satellite U920T is a very likable convertible Ultrabook, although it took me a while to realise why. The reason, I'd say, is that it doesn't come across as some toy-like novelty item – it errs more on the sensible side. Even so, I still want to tilt the screen forward at times and its fold flat and slide convertible mechanism must be obeyed, which can be a little bothersome for speedy getaways. Still, this Ultrabook feels reassuringly solid and has a battery life that should get you through the day. Some will bemoan the lack of a full HD screen though, which leads to the biggest worry: the price. It's something that dogs all convertible Ultrabooks and the state of the premium portable PC market.

A momentous moment: Seagate will end production of its Momentus 7,200rpm 2.5in disk-only drives.The storage giant will stop making the gear by the end of this year to focus on drives mixed with flash memory, although it will continue to pump out 5,400rpm disks for cheap laptops.“We are going stop building our notebook 7,200rpm hard disk drives at the end of 2013,” David Burks, Seagate's director of marketing and product management, told X-bit Labs.WD has its 10k Velociraptor plus its ordinary 5,400rpm Scorpio Blues and the Black hybrid drive with a 24GB NAND cache added to a 500GB or 1TB drive spinning at 7,200rpm. HGST has 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm Travelstars but no flash hybrids.Toshiba has MK and MQ notebook drives spinning at 5,400rpm and 7,200rpm: the MQ1ABD-H is its first 5,400rpm hybrid drive that can store 750GB or 1TB, and has 8GB of NAND.The drive suppliers reckon the notebook storage market is trifurcating into fast, fat and, er, something in between.

High-performance and svelte notebooks need solid-state disks. Fat notebooks need relatively big disks of 750GB to 1TB, or more. In-between machines need both attributes: speed and capacity, and one way to do that is with a slug of flash added to a pedestrian 5,400rpm disk drive or a nippier 7,200rpm model.We expect Seagate to turn the Momentus 5.4k line into a hybrid storing 750GB, 1TB or more, with a fat flash cache of 16GB to 24GB. It could be branded a Momentus 5400 XT. A better bet is that the existing Momentus XT is going to get a third-generation refresh with a fatter flash cache, up from the current 8GB.It has been well over two years years since Google released its first Chromebook, the CR-48, and set off on a quest to convince the world of the benefits of living in the browser. Last week, the company unveiled its latest attempt to seduce the public – the luxury touchscreen Chromebook Pixel – and gave The Reg a $1,449 LTE-equipped version to try out.We Silicon Valley press folks are a surly lot, not given to displays of emotion. But when that astronomical Pixel price was announced at Google's roll-out event, there was a lot of excited shuffling about in the press-conference room as we hacks maneuvered to get our questions in.

The biggest of those questions: since Chrome OS has been concentrating on the low-end of the market and hanging out with the kids in education, why is the Pixel leapfrogging into the very big – and pricey – leagues?At this kind of money, Google is going directly at Intel-flogged Ultrabooks and Apple's 13-inch MacBook Pro and Air – and they might just succeed in prying away some users of those laptops. After a week of lugging the Pixel around, using it for day-to-day work and trying it out in a variety of locales, we prefer its hardware to an idealized Ultrabook, the MacBook Pro, and in some ways the Air, in terms of design, build-quality, and specifications.But that's far from the whole story, as "as any fule kno," as the infamous Nigel Molesworth would say.The Pixel has a distinctive angular design with a 16.1mm-thin aluminum case that's unadorned with prominent logos or even port icons; there's just the word Chrome etched on the hinge and behind the keyboard as a reminder of who makes this device.

At 3.35 pounds and 297.7-by-224.6 millimeters in depth and width, it's on the larger and heavier side, but its build quality is superb. There's no give or twisting in the screen, and the laptop sits firmly on either desk or knees upon its little pointy feet.Inside, our test unit had a 1.8GHz dual-core Intel 3rd-Generation ("Ivy Bridge") Core i5 processor with HD 4000 graphics, 4GB of RAM, and a 64GB SSD. Buyers of the $1,299 Wi-Fi-only version, however, get only 32GB to play with. Google says this paltry internal storage space doesn't matter, however, because Mountain View gives users 1TB of cloud storage for three years. Users who prefer local storage, however, might disagree.For external hookups, there are two USB 2.0 ports on the left of the case, along with a power port, a 3.5mm combination headphone and microphone jack, and a Mini-DisplayPort connector that can run a 30-inch monitor; a USB-to-Ethernet adaptor is also included.